Australia & Pacifics

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Qantas plans to cut at least 6,000 jobs and keep 15,000 more workers on extended furloughs as Australia’s largest airline tries to survive the coronavirus pandemic.

Qantas announced a plan Thursday to reduce costs by billions of dollars and raise fresh capital. The plan includes grounding 100 planes for a year or more and immediately retiring its six remaining Boeing 747 planes.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand police said Monday they have seized $90 million from Alexander Vinnik, a Russian bitcoin fraud suspect who is in French custody but is also wanted in the United States.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said it had worked closely with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in the case. He said the money likely reflected illicit profits from thousands of victims.

CANBERRA, June 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) – A start-up announced, it will hold flying car races in the South Australian outback before the end of 2020.

Airspeeder, which is based in South Australia and London, developed flying cars that use drone technology to hover and manoeuvre.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Airspeeder co-founder, Matthew Pearson, said that, 2020 was a significant year for the industry, with the company set to host full-scale flying car races in the SA outback.

WELLINGTON, June 21 (NNN-XINHUA) – New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19 today, making the total case number to 1,161 in the country, Ministry of Health said in a statement.

As with the five other cases reported last week, the two new cases were recent arrivals from overseas and both were detected within the managed isolation facilities, said the Ministry of Health.

Sunday’s first case was the child of the couple announced on Saturday as cases who have recently arrived from India. The child was under two years old.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, June 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) – The man accused of murdering a New Zealand police officer, appeared in the Waitakere District Court in West Auckland this morning.

The 24-year-old man was charged with multiple serious offences, including murder, attempted murder and dangerous driving causing injury.

The suspect appeared via audio visual link from another part of the courthouse, which is a process used after the COVID-19 lock-down.

WELLINGTON, June 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — An unarmed New Zealand police officer was fatally shot on an Auckland street Friday, the force’s first death in the line of duty for more than a decade, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern describing the attack as “devastating”.

Police said the officer and a colleague were carrying out a routine traffic stop involving a car carrying two people when one of them produced a rifle and opened fire.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — “A sophisticated state-based cyber actor” was targeting Australia in an escalating cyber campaign that is threatening all levels of government, businesses, essential services and critical infrastructure, the prime minister said Friday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison would not name the state, amid inevitable speculation that the cyberattacks were part of Australia’s increasingly hostile rift with China.

Wellington, Jun 17 (AP/PTI) New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has assigned a top military leader to oversee the nation's border quarantine measures after what she described as an unacceptable failure by health officials in allowing two women who had recently returned from London to leave quarantine before they had been tested for the virus.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — China and Russia were using the heightened anxiety around the coronavirus pandemic to undermine Western democracies by spreading disinformation online, Australia’s foreign minister said.

The disinformation contributed to a “climate of fear and division” when the world needed cooperation and understanding, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a speech at the Australian National University, a text of which was released by her office late Tuesday.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - It took just eight days for New Zealand to lose its COVID-free status when two women who had been given permission to leave quarantine early after arriving from abroad tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has enjoyed enormous popularity for her success at ridding the country of coronavirus infection, said the government would review what happened, but that it was clear checks were not adequate in this case.